Ephyra knew, in the pit of her stomach, exactly how the Hierophant knew enough about her and Beru to play them so easily. This whole arrangement had Illya’s mark all over it. It was what he did—manipulate, exploit whatever weaknesses he could find, and steer people where he wanted them to go. And even when you saw it coming a mile away, you still fell for it.

“Yes, Immaculate One,” Illya replied, a smile curling his lips. “Quite a bit of time.”

She wondered, sometimes, what Illya had told the Hierophant about her, about them. This—the curl of his lips, the glimmer in his eyes, the suggestive lilt—felt like an answer. An angry flush rose to her cheeks.

“You’re pathetic,” she said to Illya. “All that shit in Behezda you said about making amends, cleaning up your mistakes—but the minute the tide turned, you crawled back to the Hierophant like an obedient little dog.”

Illya just smiled blithely.

Ephyra wanted nothing more than to wipe the expression off his face. To hurt him, just to know that she still could. She took a threatening step forward, uncaring of the Hierophant’s piercing gaze fixed on her. “I’ll make you pay for this. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll make you pay.”

Illya looked past her, to the Hierophant. “See? I told you it would take more than a few bruises to break this one.”

It took every shred of Ephyra’s self-control not to lunge across the room and throttle him. If she didn’t have the Godfire cuffs on, she would have. As it was, she just stared at him, radiating fury.

“All that power,” the Hierophant mused, his gaze running over Ephyra. She shivered, despite herself. “It does make you wonder what that power could do in someone else’s hands. The right hands. Perhaps…” He moved his gaze back to Illya. “Yours?”

Horror flooded her. She knew what the Hierophant was having Beru do—taking Grace from those that opposed him and giving it to the Witnesses. Was that what Illya wanted? To have Ephyra’s Grace transplanted in him? After all, that was what had attracted him to her in the first place. Her power.

“To be able to raise the dead,” the Hierophant said. “To kill with a single touch. To live—if not forever, then for a long, long time. You’d make much better use of that Grace than she does, wouldn’t you?”

“I would,” Illya agreed, stalking toward Ephyra with a predatory gleam in his eye. “For one, I would learn to control it. Something she’s never been able to do.”

“It is so often the case that those who are given these gifts lack the control to properly wield them,” the Hierophant replied.